WISDOM, BOOK OF. This book of the Apocrypha was not—as its title runs—composed by King Solomon, but emanates from the more intellectual circles of the Jewish Diaspora in Alexandria. It falls naturally into three parts which may or may not be the work of a single writer : (a) chs. li.–vi.-8 in which, in opposition to the views of the ungodly, the author argues that so far as the righteous are concerned, death is not the end : on the contrary "their hope is full immortality"; (b) vi. 9–xi. I which is written more particularly to portray Wisdom; (c) xi. 2–xix. an historical retrospect which is introduced in order to explain the origins and calamitous results of idolatry.
The book belongs to the closing period of the evolution of the Jewish Wisdom Literature (q.v.). No part of it would appear to have been written earlier than 150 B.C. Though Thackeray favours 130-100 B.C., Gregg 125-100 and Gfrorer Ioo B.C., some modern opinion (e.g., Goodrick) tends to favour a date as late as A.D. 4o (as indeed did Farrar). On the hypothesis of diversity of authorship, Holmes assigns the earlier part of the book to 50-30 B.C. and the last chapters (in his estimation an intentional addition to the first part) to 3o B.C. to A.D. In this case the author was a younger contemporary of Philo (with whom Jerome identified him), slightly a senior of Jesus of Nazareth; and he had not long written his book when it fell into the hands of St.
Paul, provided the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews with ideas and with terminology in which to express them, and, some what later, influenced, though to a much smaller extent, the au thors of Epistles of I Peter, St. James and of the Fourth Gospel. The whole book, as is now generally maintained, originally was written in Greek, and almost certainly in Alexandria by an Alex andrian Jew (or Jews) versed in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. To what extent was the author really ac quainted with Plato's writings and with Plato's thought, with Pythagorean speculations, with Stoicism and with the Greek mystery cults? For example, his doctrine of God's transcendence and unity reaches the high-water mark of Jewish theology and piety. He does not abandon the thoroughly Jewish conception of "spirit" as the agent and medium of the transcendent Deity's self-revela tion to the Universe and to His chosen people ; he even refers twice to the "Word" in this connection without any indication that he has hellenized it as Philo did. But in his description
of his favourite intermediary between earth and Heaven, "Wis dom," it is difficult not to suppose that he was (though not so directly as some scholars have urged) influenced by the Stoic doc trine of the anima mundi. In the end, however, he shows that he has not really gone so far in the direction of hypostatizing "Wisdom" as did the author of Proverbs ch. ix. (See especially, Goodrick, The Book of Wisdom, Additional Notes D and F, pp. 404-410, Till comparatively recently the view that the author was an exponent of the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls was un challenged. The crucial passage is viii. 19, 20, which had hitherto been read in the light of other passages such as i. 4, ix. 15, xi. which might seem to presuppose the evil of matter which was originally "formless" and the body as the prison of the soul in true Platonic fashion. But in 1908 F. C. Porter (Studies in Memory of W. R. Harper) put forward the revolutionary thesis that the author's statement in the passage has as its background neither Platonic nor Pythagorean speculations. It is, he urged, a native Hebrew evolution of primitive Semitic beliefs as to the union of the Divine breath with the material clay which results in the production of an individual man.
The tendency of the author's eschatology is equally problemati cal. It would appear that even if he contents himself with be lieving in the immortality of the soul only, he conceives of this as ensuring the conscious survival of the individual's personality. It is therefore difficult to believe that he does not refer to these same dead righteous .rather than (as some urge) to the living righteous. It would seem that he did not completely abandon con temporary Jewish eschatological speculations of a materialistic or semi-materialistic nature for Greek ideas as to the immortality of individual souls. He accepted both without evolving a real synthesis of them, probably without grasping the necessity for one, as was obviously his tendency in regard to several other doctrines in which he held to his Jewish beliefs though attracted by their Hellenistic counterparts and the terminology of pagan philosophers who had won his admiration.